CUE CARD MISCUES (6/16/95-6/30/95)

This contest is now closed. But enjoy!

Isn't that what Clark Gable said before the director shouted "Cut!" and the scene was retaken with a more legible cue card? It's a good thing they got the scene right the second time, or Gone With the Wind would have had some very peculiar dialog in it.

In this contest, we ask you to suppose that the speaker of a very famous line from a play or movie has misread the cue card, getting a key word wrong. This key word should be a misprint of *ONE LETTER* from the original word. So Laurence Olivier, when playing the battlefield scene of Richard III, might have been fooled into thinking his character needed a real estate agent when he shouted,

"My kingdom for a house!"

And the writers of "E.T. the Extraterrestrial" might have been anticipating the script of "Northern Exposure" when their alien mistakenly pronounced,

"E.T. phone Nome."

Got the idea? To enter this Cue Card Miscues contest, create a misprint of one letter in a famous line and e-mail it to CoxRathvon. Please identify the movie or play involved (it's not like we're walking Encyclopedias of the Cinema, you know) and add any comment or quip you think will heighten the humor. For the three entries that give us the biggest laughs, we'll award prizes of 5 Free AOL Hours each. This contest will run through Friday, June 30. Results will be posted on Friday, July 7.

"Nosebud." (Orson Welles had an allergy during the filming of "Citizen Kane." But what does it mean?) (AJGRAY)

John Merrick (unmasked, cowering before a frenzied mob at the train station, and evidently having trouble making up his mind in all the confusion): "I am not an animal! I am now an animal!" (RevMJK; also JebMar)

"Make him an offer he can't defuse." (Brando would've BOMBED with that line in "The Godfather") (SavWmson; also JebMar, Robbabe)

In "Love Story" O'Neal and McGraw make a few bucks on the side by making a commercial for an anti-flatulence medication. By using the product you can: "Love beans never having to say you're sorry." (G8ly)

Unlikely as it may seem, Madonna was in the cast of "Henry V" where Branagh found it appropriate to say, "Once more into the bleach, dear friends." (G8ly)

Michael Keaton's reply to a criminal he had just thrown out of the establishment for which he works: "I'm barman!" (EnigmaGB)

Shirley Valentine certainly would have been clairvoyant if she'd rewritten the script to read: "Gone to Greece. Sack in two weeks." (JHFrancis)

"I've always depended on the kindness of stringers." (Blanche DuBois has a passion for fisherman in "A Streetcar Named Desire") (Tombrite)

"Why didn't you take off all your clothes? You could have stopped forty wars." (Clark Gable thought Claudette Colbert would be wonderful for peacekeeping in "It Happened One Night," misreading "cars.") (BDPnApril)

"With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pooh!" (Prof. Harold Hill selling stuffed animals in "The Music Man") (Alamano)

"Pooh, right here in River City!" (MJSpence)

"With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Poop!" (Prof. Hill selling fertilizer) (Alamano)

Ophelia may have had second thoughts about suicide if Hamlet had said "Get thee to a punnery." Then again... (JHFrancis)

Mel Gibson as Hamlet had to be thinking of Ray Kroc's reaction upon the first hanging of the sign "Over 1 Million Sold," when he exclaimed, "What a piece of work is a Mac!" (MJSpence)

From Arthur Miller's adaptation of Hamlet: "Frailty thy name is Loman!" (StefSpad)

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, led me your cars..." (ALums48454)

"Parking is such sweet sorrow..." (ALums48454)

"Beware the ices of March!" (It can get pretty cold around the 15th...) (StefSpad; also GlemWard)

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stats, but in ourselves." (Hotznplotz)

"I come to burp Caesar, not to praise him." (Arglbargl)

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a burpy night." (Spoken by Bette Davis in "All About Eve") (Zonkerette)

"Me Tarzan, you jade!" (Milsean)

"Tis a far far wetter thing I do now than I have ever done before." (Said by Ronald Coleman portraying poet Francoise Villon as he prepared to sacrifice his life for his fellow Frenchmen.) (Azure5)

Colin Clive (In "Frankenstein," frenzied to the point of mistaking his just
reanimated creation for someone else):

"It's Alice!" or,

"It's Olive!" or even,

"It's Clive!" (RevMJK)

"Mama always said Fife is like a box of chocolates." (Mrs. Gump thought Don Knotts was sweet) (Alamano; also AJGray)

"My momma always said...'.life is like a lox of chocolates....'" (Wagsalot)

In "Death of a Salesman," Willy Loman's wife says "Attention must be pain". (Comment of a desperately sleepy soldier on sentry duty from 2am to 6am?) (ShedPot)

The anonymous actor playing the disembodied voice in "Field of Dreams," alerting the filmmakers that it'll have to be a union shoot:

"If you guild it, they will come." (Robbabe)

"If you build it, whey will come." (Wlwjr)

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to tape it anymore!" (Peter Finch as the suicidal newscaster in "Network," letting everyone know he's done enough broadcasting for the day) (Robbabe)

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to bake it anymore." (Zonkerette)

"I'm mad as Nell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" (Tombrite)

Anthony Perkins in "Psycho," explaining away his quirks as merely the fashion of the day: "We all go a little mod sometimes." (Robbabe)

Danny Torrance (in a clairvoyant trance in "The Shining" and in the wrong hotel, apparently): "Redruf!" (RevMJK)

Folks on the set of Gone With the Wind wondered if Clark Gable was exhibiting disdain for the Forest Service when he said: "Frankly, my bear, I don't give a damn!" (September)

"By George, I think she's not it!" (Originally in "My Fair Lady" as "By George, I think she's got it!" when Eliza finally gets that "rain in Spain" pronunciation. Seems to me the story would have taken an entirely different turn if...) (QuipRosen)